


I'll Look After You

by PixChuu22



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 15:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixChuu22/pseuds/PixChuu22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson usually looks after Sherlock Holmes, but when John has a head cold and can't live up to his usual duties, Sherlock gets an idea for a very satisfying experiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Look After You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenLadyAnne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenLadyAnne/gifts), [DaringD](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaringD/gifts).



In the seven years that he's been chasing after Sherlock Holmes through the streets of London and across the British countryside, Dr. John Watson has learned a few things.

He knows that, at the conclusion of a successful case, Sherlock will be buzzing with adrenaline for several hours. He'll be jittering around the flat as he clears off the wall above the sofa, flips through a book absorbing a phrase here or there, plays a snippet of music on his violin, and reads through new messages from potential clients - something that takes almost no time at all now that most messages about possible cases come to them through John's blog. 

John knows, though, that after those few adrenaline-fueled hours have passed, all the bodily necessities which Sherlock has ignored for days or weeks while he pushed his body to keep up with his brilliant, racing mind will suddenly catch up to him all at once. 

So, John has a routine. Once they get back to the flat, while Sherlock is still pacing and crowing at his success, John digs through the refrigerator to find whatever still-edible takeaway leftovers might be hidden behind a plate of human eyeballs or a bowlful of kidney ("Cow, John, not human. Stop looking as if someone's tried to slip poison into your morning coffee.") and he heats the leftovers to the point of steaming, knowing that by the time Sherlock is ready to eat, they'll have cooled enough to not burn his tongue. 

He also goes along to the bedroom to turn back the duvet and blankets on the bed they share. Once he's eaten, Sherlock will rather desperately need to sleep. Frequently, Sherlock doesn't even make it out of his trousers and button-up shirt before he collapses into unconsciousness. If John didn't turn back to duvet, Sherlock would simply fall face-down on top of it and wake up cold and stiff hours later. John had only needed a couple of mornings of Sherlock being in a strop from poor sleep to learn that turning back the blankets was the minimum to insure a pleasant day following a post-case coma. 

With the food heated and the bed prepared, John will then change into a clean undershirt and pyjama bottoms before tossing a dressing gown over them and returning to the sitting room. Ostensibly, he's there to read, but truly he's there to keep an eye on Sherlock. He will watch until Sherlock has cleared the wall, played the violin, checked his laptop, eaten his food, and then John will lead Sherlock from the kitchen to their bedroom. If he doesn't, Sherlock will continue twitching and pacing until after several more hours he simply collapses, often passing out on the sofa or curled in his armchair, leading to the following day being full of temper tantrums and general unpleasantness due to his muscles being tied into knots. 

John knows all these things in the same way that he knows the flutter of Sherlock's eyelashes when he's dreaming, and knows that one flutter means good dreams and another means nightmares. He knows Sherlock in the way that he knows how to properly boil an egg so that the yolk isn't still runny when it's cracked open or how to cauterize an artery to prevent it leaking all over your surgery site or how to hold a gun so that your aim is true. He knows Sherlock in facts and emotions and everything in between. 

That doesn't matter when he has a cold, though. 

John with a head cold cannot function. John with a head cold loses his ability to do what needs to be done. After a successful case, John with a head cold cannot bring himself to move from his armchair once he's sunk into it. With a pounding head, swollen sinuses, and an aching throat, John simply cannot bring himself to do all the things that he knows need doing, despite the fact that he'll have to listen to Sherlock grouse and be generally unpleasant the following day. 

John with a head cold just needs rest. He dozes off, arms crossed on his chest and head leaned onto the back of the chair, mouth open in a snuffling, nasal snore. 

Sherlock finishes clearing the wall, his arms full of papers, thumbtacks pattering around him as he steps down from the sofa. He drops his armful of loose paper on the sitting room table and turns to speak to John, stopping at once when he notices John is deeply asleep. 

He had, of course, noticed the signs of an impending head cold days ago. He'd warned John, but the good doctor had insisted that he was absolutely fine. John had started sneezing that afternoon as they were trying to hide silently behind a dividing wall in a parking garage, alerting their quarry. It had been annoying and ridiculous, but unavoidable, Sherlock knows. And John _had_ kept up with Sherlock on the chase that had resulted from his ill-timed sneezes, _had_ been there to see Sherlock catch his prey and ring Lestrade to come make the arrest. John could be forgiven for his sneezing as long as he was able to appreciate Sherlock's brilliance at the end. 

John is definitely sick now. Dozing off on his armchair like a pensioner is not his norm, despite the fact that John is, quite literally, a pensioner. Sherlock knows that people who are feeling poorly enough that they pass out in armchairs rather than walking down the hall to the available bed almost certainly are ill-equipped to take care of themselves, so he decides to make good use of his post-case high. 

It is hard not to be distracted by the human ear in the Petri dish waiting on the kitchen table; it looks as if it might be ready for dissection, and examining the scrapings off of it under his microscope would be intensely interesting. But, no, Sherlock has a job waiting on him already. True, it is a menial job, but it is a job that will undoubtedly please John once it is done, and Sherlock has found that he has an almost physical need to see John's admiring smile on regular occasions. It is similar to his craving for heroin, or at least, what his craving for heroin was like when he was using regularly. Sherlock takes a moment to compare his craving for the two things and is pleased with his findings. John's admiring smile is much more addictive now than heroin, his craving for John's admiration much more potent than his craving for the high that follows the needle in his vein. Of course, it has been years since he last shot up, and he might find that his cravings for the two things were weighted differently if he tried now. 

After a moment's thought, Sherlock decides that he is uninterested in finding which would be the more addictive substance if he had both regularly. Part of that was almost certainly because he knows that regular utilization of heroin would erase all of John's admiring smiles, and since the admiration was the thing he was most addicted to now, Sherlock did not want to interrupt his regular supply. 

It is obvious upon opening the fridge door that John has not been to Tescos in the last week; there are more body parts and test tube racks on the shelves than actual food, and Sherlock has to rethink what he'd been planning to do for John. Simplicity will suffice, although it may not win him _quite_ so admiring a smile. 

Sherlock takes eggs from the fridge, tinned beans from a cabinet (so that was where he'd left the beaker of ammonia and fingernail clippings; they should be nearly finished marinating by now), and lays out slices of bread to put in the toaster once he's finished with the foods that take longer to cook than a bit of bread would do. 

While the eggs boil and the beans heat, he heads through to the bedroom and digs around in John's dresser until he can find his favorite of John's undershirts - the oldest and softest one and therefore the best one for John to wear since Sherlock enjoys rubbing his fingertips over it and feeling the contrast between the butter soft cotton and the firmness of John's chest - and the least objectionable of his pyjama bottoms, wondering not for the first time how someone as steadfast as John could so thoroughly enjoy whimsical patterns on his nightwear. 

Sherlock quickly turns back the blankets on the bed before setting John's clothes on the fitted sheet, and then heads back through the flat to check the progress of John's food. The eggs are tumbling in the bubbling water and the beans have begun to steam, so Sherlock switches the burners off and drops slices of bread into the toaster, thinking of the caramelization of the sugars in the bread and how meat also caramelizes when heated and how it might be possible to test if all the parts of the human body would caramelize at the same temperature or if perhaps ears caramelize faster than thighs simply because of how thin they are or if the fat in the thighs would speed the process along and - 

The toast is done. Sherlock snaps back to attention, lifting heated and browned (caramelized sugars, beautiful and predictable) slices of toast out and laying them on plates waiting on the counter. He is unsure if the plates are clean or not, but they look clean and they are so conveniently placed for pieces of toast. 

In a few minutes, he is standing next to John in the sitting room, holding two plates filled with beans, toast, and dangerously-rolling peeled boiled eggs. 

"John. Wake up. I've made you food." 

John snorts and then groans, raising his head from the chairback slowly. He reaches a hand up to rub at the back of his neck, obviously aching from falling asleep in such an unsupported position, and then stops as he takes in the tall form of Sherlock with two plates of food in his hands. 

"You... wait. Did you cook?" John is blinking slowly, obviously pulling himself up from sleep with great difficulty. His voice is thick and hoarse and not at all the way Sherlock is used to hearing it, but the differences are interesting. The acute laryngitis caused by the swelling of the vocal folds indicate that the cold has settled thoroughly in John's throat and John's always present nasal tone is much more acute with the increased swelling of his sinuses. Sherlock can track the progression of the cold through the sound of John's voice, and he begins cataloguing the changes from one hour to the next, rethinking how John's voice had sounded when they were waiting in the parking garage, when they were chasing the fleeing criminal, when they were riding in a cab back to the flat, when they were making their way up the stairs and into the sitting room. 

But John has asked a question in his new hoarse, nasal voice, and Sherlock needs to answer it before John becomes cross. Sherlock knows from previous experience that John is inclined towards crossness when he is ill. 

"Hmm. Somewhat. There is very little in the way of food in the flat. I made do with what was available." 

"But you used the stove. For something other than boiling eyeballs in vinegar. Or setting fire to different weights of paper to see if they smoke differently. Or -" 

"Yes, I used the stove to cook food. I do know how to cook. You've seen me do it before," Sherlock says, cutting John off. His voice is tetchy; he had not expected the meal to be such a surprise, after all. He had done it for his next hit of John's admiration. 

"I have," John agrees, pushing himself up a bit in his chair to reach for one of the plates. He clears his throat and adds, "But it happens so rarely, I forget that you _can_." 

John surveys the offering of food on his plate and then slowly turns his unfathomably dark blue eyes to Sherlock, face softening as he stares at the other man. Slowly, the admiration John is feeling brings his lips up and within a few seconds, Sherlock can feel the rush of oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and seratonin in response to that smile and he relaxes into them, letting the chemical cocktail wash through his brain. 

"Thank you," John says, the words roughened by his voice but made beautiful by the expression on his face. 

They eat in silence, John mostly picking at his food while Sherlock clears his plate. Their roles are reversed in all things this evening, it seems. 

Sherlock clears away the dishes, leaving John's half-cleared plate on the countertop; while he has had several successful studies of the rate of mould accumulation on tinned beans, he's never tried it with boiled eggs before. If John is to be down for several days with the cold, he might be able to test it out successfully before John throws away the experiment. 

John shuffles past Sherlock on his way to the bedroom, sneezing into his elbow as he passes, and Sherlock flicks lights off in the flat before following after John. Even if John is too sick to grouse about the energy bills right now, Sherlock has heard it often enough that it is almost becoming automatic for him to switch lights off. The miracles of John Watson never cease. 

"You laid out my pyjamas?" John asks when Sherlock steps into the bedroom. And there it is again, his admiring smile crinkling up the corners of his eyes as he turns to look over at Sherlock. The chemical cocktail slams into his brain again and Sherlock nearly shudders from how delicious it is. It is better even than sex, although he won't tell John that particular bit of information. John understands a lot of Sherlock's strange ideas but he would not understand how a smile could top an orgasm. 

John moves across the bedroom to rest his hands gently on Sherlock's hips, looking up into Sherlock's inscrutable face. "What on earth has gotten in to you tonight?" 

"You're ill," Sherlock says, as if that's all the explanation John should need. 

"Right. I've been ill before and you didn't make me a meal." 

"After a case, you always look after me," Sherlock explains, his brow furrowing as he searches for a way to explain himself. "We've completed the case, but you're ill... so _I'll_ look after _you_." 

The softness of John's expression is nearly as good as his admiring smile, Sherlock thinks. He can almost prise open John's head and pick through his thoughts simply by reading the crinkling at the corners of his eyes, the muscle taughtness in his cheeks and jaw, the upward cant of his eyebrows above the bridge of his nose. 

"This is lovely," John says, fingers stroking Sherlock's hips gently. "I appreciate it, although I won't expect it again." 

"No, you shouldn't," Sherlock admits. "Tomorrow, you'll have to phone in takeaway, I'm sure. But don't touch the plates on the counter; I want to see how long it takes the eggs to mould." 

John snorts a laugh, mouth twisting wryly, and then he's pushing up onto his tiptoes, his hands coming up to thread his fingers through Sherlock's curls and tip the taller man's head down. John presses his lips to Sherlock's forehead gently and then turns to the bed, lifting his jumper over his head as he toes his shoes off. "You are the strangest man. But then, I've always liked strange things; I suppose that's why I love you." 

Sherlock smiles faintly. That is the conclusion he, also, had come to many years before. It was the only logical conclusion from all the evidence, after all, and John Watson has always been the one experiment Sherlock Holmes finds the most interesting to study, so he is quite sure of his conclusions on that topic. 

While John is changing, Sherlock throws his own clothes into the hamper and slips into a comfortable t-shirt and sweat pant, sliding into bed. He rolls towards John's side, opening his arms invitingly. John sneezes into his elbow again before groaning and crawling into the bed. He presents his back to Sherlock and scoots backwards until his spine is pressing into Sherlock's chest and belly. 

"I have to admit," John murmurs in his new, thicker voice, "I really like you looking after me like this." 

"Mmm," Sherlock rumbles, pressing his lips into John's hair. "It might be worth further experimentation." 

"'Experimentation,'" John whispers, amused disbelief coloring the soft word. "All right, yeah. That's one experiment I wouldn't mind." 

John dozes off a few minutes later, his breathing loud thanks to the swollen vocal folds, but Sherlock doesn't mind; he's not going to sleep for hours yet. His mind is racing through all the possibilities that looking after John presents. Perhaps tomorrow he will make John tea without any added potential hallucinogens. Mrs. Hudson will surely be able to spare some biscuits, and the presentation of tea _and_ biscuits will almost certainly earn him another admiring smile. For a few days, at least, Sherlock will be able to ride high on them with delicious regularity. 

He nuzzles his lips and nose firmly against the top of John's head, inhaling the scent of John's hair deeply into his lungs. "I'll look after you," he murmurs. What a grand experiment this will be. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very much for reading this fic. If you haven't yet, please take a moment to leave Kudos (and, if you are reading this Note at the very end, I assume you enjoyed it enough to WANT to leave Kudos). Comments are my addiction; I love to chat. Don't hesitate to ask questions or just say how much you enjoyed reading.
> 
> For QueenLadyAnne and DaringD for commenting on pretty much all the Sherlock fanfic I've written and for being so delightful to 'chat' with via comments. You two help keep me writing by feeding my addiction to feedback. Thank you.
> 
> And with thanks to Nickygp (thetwogaydetectives.tumblr.com) for editing/beta-ing this one-shot fluff fic. She keeps my (writing) right.
> 
> You can follow my Tumblr for updates and random writerly musings plus reblogs of Johnlock theories and metas that catch my attention: pixchuu221b.tumblr.com
> 
> See you in the next fanfic.


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